BBA Rings in the School Year with Backpack Drive
By: Taina Santiago
When summer ended and the school year began again, parents were racing to check off their supply lists. For working class families, this task can be time-consuming and expensive. In response, Metro Detroit DSA’s Black and Brown Alliance (BBA) organized a back-to-school backpack drive.
The event took place Saturday, August 30, at the Eastside Community Network (ECN) building in Detroit, where other community services like free vaccines for children and free pizza for families were set up as well. ECN also runs a free store packed with clothes, shoes, and toiletries.
This space fostered the socialist principle of meeting the needs of the working class in real ways. With a “Solidarity Metro Detroit DSA” banner proudly displayed, a dozen DSA volunteers throughout the day distributed 140 backpacks filled with folders, markers, pencils, and other school supplies.
Why Mutual Aid?
Mutual aid is a form of community service that expects nothing in return from those you are lending a helping hand. It functions under the philosophy that we always show up for each other in our communities. BBA has been talking about doing a mutual aid project for a few months now, with members eager to get started on something actionable. BBA Secretary Rodney Coopwood had a personal connection to the idea: “Growing up in Detroit, there were times when I myself didn’t have what I needed for school. I had to wait for supplies well after classes started.”
BBA was also inspired by the Black Panthers and their ability to radicalize people through community services. BBA Co-chair Jon Mukes said, “[Mutual aid is] how a lot of Black people from various other socialist traditions organized. Free breakfast programs, free health clinics, etc., were incredibly revolutionary. Historically one of the reasons why socialism grew is because socialists and communists fed the people when the capitalist system failed.”
Because of the Black Panthers’ example, it was clear to the BBA that there had to be educational and community-building elements in the project to avoid doing one-and-done, detached charity work. So along with handing out supplies, we also gave literature about DSA to parents and had deliberate conversations with members of the community about socialism.
Recruitment Potential of Mutual Aid
One of the BBA’s goals is to diversify Metro Detroit DSA. Black and Brown socialists have always been the backbone of the larger movement and there should be many more people of color in our organization. Mukes said, “One of the many reasons that our chapter is incredibly white is that we aren’t visible/doing work in Black and Brown communities.” While a delegate to DSA’s national convention this year, Mukes says he “made a point to hang around and talk to other POC comrades and I asked about how they recruited Black and Brown members. A backpack drive for Black people in their communities came up a lot.”
BBA’s mission of diversity in the chapter also informed where we chose to hold the backpack drive: in Detroit. Volunteers spent the day informing Black parents about DSA’s September general meeting, giving interested people an actionable next step to get involved, and collecting contact information for further communications. An event that makes DSA visible and allows us to have one-on-one conversations with people of color has great recruitment potential for working class Black and Brown comrades.
Another goal of the BBA — and DSA as a whole — is to change the narrative around socialism. Decades of Red Scare propaganda have painted socialists as the enemy of the people when the opposite is true. Socialists want to bring working class people together and events like the backpack drive do just that.
“If we approach them with more actions and fewer words, they see us as people of purpose. We give their kids backpacks. We provide water when they’re thirsty, heat when they’re cold,” Coopwood said. “When we were there, I expected to be brushed off, but people were very open to talking about socialism. They may not sign up for DSA, but they’ll know that DSA and socialists are there to help. So when an open socialist is on the ballot, holding a rally, or pushing an agenda to publicize a private corporation or implement ranked-choice voting, they’ll be open to us.”
Lessons on Organizing
As important as the event itself was all the planning, budgeting, location scouting, and prepping that had to be done in a short window of time. When BBA voted to put the backpack drive into motion, there were only a couple of weeks before the school year began. Within a couple of days, Coopwood had drawn up a fully mapped out proposal to take to the steering committee. In another week, Mukes was ordering supplies and a week after that, those supplies were in the hands of working class families.
This speed of turning talk into action was a testament to BBA members’ organizing skills and served as a confidence booster to fuel more projects. Coopwood said, “I realized I’m much more capable as an organizer than I originally thought. This was my first time doing something like this. I applied what I do at work as a researcher, made an action plan, and it worked — I was very proud of that.” Mukes sang the praises of fellow organizers, saying, “My biggest takeaway was how quickly a handful of dedicated people can set something like this up.”
These kinds of mutual aid projects would give the chapter more opportunities to build up experienced organizers, giving members projects to try out, learn from, and succeed at. The DSA volunteers who have conversations with strangers about socialism will improve their skills there too. The members who put events like the backpack drive together will take valuable lessons into subsequent projects, bringing ideas from the abstract into reality with effectiveness and efficiency.
As Coopwood pointed out, these events “give action-oriented members an outlet to effectively aid communities, and those communities know exactly who assisted them, building unity and loyalty. This unity will be reflected when we need to run electoral candidates or launch campaigns like Michigan for the Many,” which is a campaign we actually gathered signatures for at the backpack drive. He continued, “This is how we get the public — who intrinsically value actions over promises — to know what Metro Detroit DSA is and bring them to our side.”
Just the Beginning
As socialists, getting the material needs of the working class met is an important element in our ideal political and economic system, so we should put our socialist money/action where our mouth is. The backpack drive is not a one-off event, it is a kick-off to a greater focus of the BBA on mutual aid in general. Our direct involvement in communities of color — getting to know people and cultivating camaraderie — will be invaluable to building our movement.
And it isn’t just about the big picture goals. It’s also about the small moments that keep us connected to the human-driven purpose of everything we are doing, which Coopwood highlighted: “I got to see kids pick out their favorite color backpacks, and in the grand scheme of trying to stop capitalism and imperialism from destroying the world, it’s nice to see a kid pick their favorite color backpack.”
